I got my first guitar when I was twelve.  First I sang with the church choir, then I sang in the church basement coffee house.  In my early twenties, I sang at gig number one.  Earning a living interrupted this joyful pastime, so I didn’t get back to it till much later in life, dipping my toes in at the Catbird Cafe, an iconic and tolerant weekly open mic in the New England Wildlife Center.   I then had a chance to sing and learn from some seasoned musicians at local blues jams like guitarists Chuck Edgerly, Steve Anderson and harp man Allen Oliver.  

With a background in the study of fiction writing, I eased into song writing and put songs together first with what I remembered from from my Channel 2 guitar lessons when I was twelve, and then made my songs around the chords and progressions I learned as an older student of guitar.  

Though I have never mastered the instrument, guitar enabled me to create melodies.  Long Reach is collection of some of my first songs about identity, global warming and yearning.  

Before that time, I had begun a listening study of the blues.  From Delta, Peidmont, Hill Country, Texas, and Chicago blues to big band blues, rhythm and jumpin’ blues, from the great early women vocalists like Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, Mamie Smith, Georgia White, Rosa Henderson, Memphis Minnie, to Lil Green and Blue Lu Barker and so many others to the later jazzy and rhythm singers like Irma Thomas, Sugar Pie DiSanto and my favorite Big Maybelle right on up to the great contemporary blues men and women like Jontavious Willis, Christone Kingfish, Duke Robillard, Larkin Poe, Shemekia Copeland, Ruthie Foster...It can be hard to find your footing when you’re influenced by so many different artists.